Many broadcast programs are produced and broadcast live or substantially live. For example, many sports fans love to watch their teams play on television as the event happens. The cost and complexity to produce and distribute these events can be quite high, making it impractical to broadcast certain events live. As a result, many events are not broadcast live, as the potential interest may not justify the cost. As a specific example, many college sporting events are not broadcast live to a nationwide audience. While a Michigan football fan may enjoy the chance to watch every game in a live broadcast during the season, a New Mexico State University football fan will likely see very few games each season, if any.
One significant reason these live broadcasts are currently so costly is that they require a significant amount of equipment and staff at the event to produce. Current remote production includes transporting and setting up a temporary production facility on-site at each event. For example, referring to FIG. 1, a block diagram depicting a typical configuration of a system 100 for producing a live event is shown. Commonly, the equipment is delivered to the remote event site in one or more production trucks 130. The equipment includes, for example, a number of camera rigs 132a-n which are positioned around the event to capture different images and angles. The camera rigs 132a-n are in communication with a number of camera video units 134 (which are frequently located in the production truck 130) which provide video and audio feeds to a router or control system 140. A number of engineering and production personnel (not shown in FIG. 1) are required to configure and operate the systems, provide engineering support (e.g., to operate systems including digital video equipment (DVE) 142), cut and insert tape and graphics (e.g., using tape systems 144), control and direct the production, provide voice talent, etc. The captured event video and audio, graphics, and voice talent are combined and edited in the production truck 130 and encoded and backhauled (over backhaul channel 120) to a remotely located master studio for transmission to different distribution channels.
In a typical remote event broadcast, in addition to camera operators, ten or more support personnel may be required to produce a broadcast event. These personnel must travel to the event location, and are typically occupied for one or more full days during preparation, broadcast, and breakdown of the equipment.
Different sports or events have different equipment requirements and cost. For example, the production of a broadcast of a baseball game may require two days of setup, production and break down, and the use of five (5) cameras, while the production of the broadcast of a football game may require two days and the use of seven (7) cameras. While several attempts have been made to remotely produce live event broadcasts, network limitations can make it difficult to do so for many events. For example, in the case where a live event is at a location geographically separated from a production control facility, and the broadcast is to be produced using high definition video signals (e.g., 1,920×1,080 pixel resolution), network bandwidth limitations can make it difficult if not impossible to remotely produce the broadcast. For example, if five cameras at the remote event site capture high definition video, the uncompressed video signals alone would require approximately 8 Gb per second of bandwidth to transmit to the remote production control facility. A typical satellite backhaul channel between the remote event site and a production control facility may have substantially less than 1 Gb per second of bandwidth available. As such, in most situations, it is not possible to remotely produce such events using existing systems.
One approach to provide some limited remote production capability has been attempted by the assignee of the present invention to allow a production crew at a production location to switch to video and audio from a sideline reporter at a remote event. The approach requires a second satellite uplink feed to be provided from the remote event which contains the video and audio from the sideline reporter. The production crew at the production location may selectively switch between the main program (transmitted from the remote event over a first satellite uplink channel) to the video and audio from the sideline reporter (transmitted over the second satellite uplink channel). While the approach allows some limited production at the remote production location, it still does not allow the full event to be remotely produced using existing network infrastructure.
As a result, it would be desirable to provide methods and systems which allow broadcasts of live events to be remotely produced using existing network infrastructures.